"The War Prayer," a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.
The structure of the work is simple, but effective: An unnamed country goes to war, and patriotic citizens attend a church service for soldiers who have been called up. The people call upon their God to grant them victory and protect their troops. Suddenly, an "aged stranger" appears and announces that he is God's messenger. He explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves: the prayer for the suffering and destruction of their enemies. What follows is a grisly depiction of hardships inflicted on war-torn nations by their conquerors. The story ends pessimistically with the man, perhaps not surprisingly, being ignored.
The piece was left unpublished by Mark Twain at his death in April 1910, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that the story would be considered sacrilegious.[1] Twain's publisher and other friends also discouraged him from publishing it. According to one account, his illustrator Dan Beard asked him if he would publish it anyway, and Twain replied, "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead."[2] Mindful of public reaction, he considered that he had a family to support[1] and did not want to be seen as a lunatic or fanatic.[2]
Twain's "The War Prayer" was finally published—and probably none too soon—some six years after his death, in the November 1916 issue of what was then called Harper's Monthly. By then, World War I had been raging for a little over two years, amassing unprecedented casualties on both sides. The U.S., however, remained proudly neutral, as reflected in President Woodrow Wilson's re-election campaign slogan that year: He Kept Us Out of War. However, beginning with its earlier sinking of the British RMS Lusitania in 1915, with 128 Americans on board, Germany seemed determined to turn the tide of U.S. disinterest in entering the war; and while the public outrage over the Lusitania's sinking led, at first, to Germany's accession to Wilson's demands that it stop attacks on non-military ships, the "Central Powers" member nation had again stepped-up its aggressive submarine activity by January 1917, just two months after Twain's piece was first published.
Even before The War Prayer's publication, Germany was suspected of sabotage in the 1916 Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey, and the earlier 1914 Kingsland Explosion in Lyndhurst, New Jersey; then, after The War Prayer's publication, German U-boats sunk more than a half dozen U.S. merchant ships. During that period, also, the infamous Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted, then finally leaked and published on March 1, 1917; in which telegram Germany pledged to help Mexico win back Texas, New Mexico and Arizona (which Mexico had lost to the U.S. some 70 years earlier in the Mexican-American War) if Mexico would join World War I as Germany's ally. Consequently, on April 6, 1917, just five months after Twain's The War Prayer was posthumously published, and with the tide of U.S. disinterest in entering the war having by then completely turned, President Wilson called for war on Germany, and Congress agreed and declared it, thereby officially entering the U.S. into World War I.
The timing of The War Prayer's publication was none too soon, then, because though few in the then-non-interventionist United States found it unpatriotic when it was first published, many would likely have found it so if it had been published as early as two months later when Germany broke its submarine attack promises; and most would likely have found it unpatriotic if it had been published just five months after it actually was, when the U.S. finally entered World War I in April 1917.
Exactly 90 years later, in April 2007, a ten-minute, short film adaptation, entitled "The War Prayer," was released by Lyceum Films. Written by Marco Sanchez, and directed by Michael Goorjian, the adaptation starred Jeremy Sisto as "The Stranger," and Tim Sullivan as "The Preacher".[3][4]
That same year, journalist and Washington Monthly president Markos Kounalakis directed and produced an animated short film based on Twain's piece, also entitled "The War Prayer." Narrated by Peter Coyote, it featured Lawrence Ferlinghetti as the Minister, and Eric Bauersfeld as the Stranger.[5]
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